Biographies: Pramodavajra, Regent of the Buddha

A Miraculous Birth

The biography of Pramodavajra has been handed down orally from very ancient times. The story therefore contains many legendary elements, and this we have to understand as we now retell it.

To start with, according to the legend, Prince
Uparaja and his wife Princess Alokabhasvati of Uddiyana had a beautiful daughter named Princess Sudharma. None of the old books
tell us much about Princess Sudharma's personal appearance, but we can
easily imagine her, fine of feature, small and delicate, similar to any
of the petite golden skinned, dark haired girls that may be found in Swat
in present times. Her aristocratic features, coupled with the gentle grace
of a religious nature, undoubtedly lent Sudharma a particular beauty.
This gentle, sweet girl was by nature very devout and kind. Thus when
a strange, wandering holy man in white robes known as Kukkuraja, "King
of the Dogs," came begging at the palace gate, the young Sudharma
was deeply affected. She recognized something unique in the personality of the mysterious
Yogi that stirred her own religious yearning. As soon as she
was old enough, she took the ordination of a Buddhist nun and went to
live in retreat on a small island in the midst of Dhanakosha lake.1

According to the old books, one day while taking a purificatory bath
on the shore of the sacred lake, the nun Sudharma beheld a pure mystical
vision of a celestial white being.2 Some tales state the vision was that of a man, others say it was that of a white swan.

In either case, as an angelic white human figure or as a white divine swan,
the old
texts all agree in stating that the visionary being was ultimately an
emanation of the supreme, being Vajrasattva.

In Princess Sudharma's mystical vision, the holy White Presence blessed
her with special grace by placing a crystal vase3
three times on her head. Blissful prismatic light radiated from this visionary
vase into Sudharma's pure heart, and she was temporarily transported into
a state of mystical rapture.

It is said that while she was enraptured in the cosmic joy of this blessed
vision, the heavenly Bodhisattva Adhicitta,4
an emanation of the self-existent Absolute (Vajra Sattva),
entered Princess Sudharma's womb.

Therefore, according to the historical accounts available to us, the
conception and birth of Sri Pramodavajra is rendered miraculous. Sudharma
is portrayed as a perfect virgin maid, vowed to pure chastity, who becomes
uniquely blessed to conceive a child.

The symbolic meaning behind the legend of the virginal conception and
birth of Sri Pramodavajra is clear. Sri Pramodavajra was what in India
is called an Avatar (from the Sanskrit ava, "descend",
and tri, "to pass"), a term that signifies the special
Incarnation of a divinely enlightened one in the flesh. We do not have
to take the symbolism of virgin birth literally, for its poetic and mystical
meaning to be acceptable to us.

Ten months after the miraculous conception of the holy Incarnation in
the womb of the nun Sudharma, a male child was born. But instead of joy,
the mother was overcome with shame. After all, she was a virgin, vowed to
religious chastity and a life of contemplation. And not only was Sudharma
a nun, but also she was a royal princess. Her first thought—terrible
though it was—consisted of finding some means to dispose of the
unwanted child. Immediately the baby was born, she discarded his fragile
little body by leaving it out on the local cinder pit to die.

Although the story is a terrible one, and the act wholly criminal, we can imagine the shame and compulsion that drove Sudharma to such extremes. How many a young woman, and especially a nun, finding herself
pregnant, has not known the desire to avoid public attention through unburdening
themselves of the baby, by abortion or other means? In Sudharma's century,
for a young maiden to be subject to such terrible public exposure must have
been unbelievably horrendous.

Sudharma had one devout maid servant, a young girl named Sukha Saraswati.
This maid attended the Princess Sudharma during her spiritual retreat,
and it was this maid alone who knew the secret of her pregnancy. Sukha
Saraswati became hysterical when she observed that her mistress had disposed
of the tiny baby. Three days following upon the birth, she slipped out
on her own to the cinder pit to see if the poor infant was dead. To her
amazement Sukha saw that the child was not only alive, but that he was
happily playing in the ashes, surrounded in an aura of prismatic light.

Rushing back to her royal mistress, Sukha exclaimed with excitement:
"O Lady! O Lady! Come and see! Your baby is alive." Sudharma
was shocked. Now, riddled with guilt, she dashed along with her servant
to the cinder pit. There, just as Sukha had said, was the baby, gurgling
with happiness, joyously propped up in the ashes like a little saddhu.
All around his brown skinned, ash covered body, the miraculous glow of
a heavenly rainbow light seemed to shine.

Seeing the baby for herself, Princess Sudharma underwent a complete change
of heart. Where before she had been consumed by shame at having given
birth to a child at all, now she only felt shame for the terrible act
which she had done in attempting to get rid of it.

When Sudharma and her maid servant gathered up the precious child and
returned with him, the very angels of heaven, so it is said, cried with
joy. Sukha Saraswati, the maid servant, then told her mistress: "Truly,
your baby is the son of the Buddha!"

So Sudharma named the child Akasavajra (Diamond of Space)6
and took him under her care.

Pramodavajra's Youth

When he attained his seventh year, the boy Akasavajra desired to discuss
wisdom with the Pandits of Uddiyana. In this regard he was a remarkable
child. He went to his mother and said, "Mother, it is my desire to
converse with the scholars. Please give me leave to attend their Council."

But Sudharma thought that her son was too young and immature for the
company of scholars. "You are a mere boy," she said. "It
is not possible for you to enter the academy of the learned until you
have matured." Unable to obtain her blessing, Akasavajra ran away
on his own, and sought out the wise men at the court of Prince Uparaja
of Dhanakosha.

When Akasavajra first appeared amongst these scholars (pandits)
and monks (bhikshus) during a royal audience, Prince Uparaja
was affronted by the youth's presence, thinking, "Who is this child?"
The scholars and monks were likewise upset to find a seven year old presenting
himself as one of their equals. But when the boy began to speak words
of purest wisdom, the King's mood changed to awe.

"Who is this child?" the King asked his counselors. "Is
he a special emanation of the Buddha or what?"

When
summoned by royal command to speak before the whole academy of pandits,
Akasavajra made respectful salutation and quickly demonstrated his innate
wisdom and profound understanding of the Buddha's doctrine. Overwhelmed
by the child's brilliance, all the wise men of the land proclaimed him
a prodigy. They gave him the ordination of a novice and bestowed on him
the name of Prajnabhava, meaning the one who is a being (bhava)
of peerless Wisdom (prajna).

Later, when his studies were complete, the young man received the full
ordination of a Buddhist monk and was given the title of Master
(acarya) from the King. Thus he was known as Acarya Pramodavajra.7
It is by this name (or the familiar Tibetan translation, Lopon Gah-rab Dorje)
that he is best known.

Great Enlightenment

As a Buddhist monk , Acarya Pramodavajra lived a purely monastic, disciplined life
for many years. This discipline as a monk prepared him for the contemplative
life. At first he studied many texts, many fine scriptures and profound metaphysical treatises, acquiring a vast wealth of knowledge. Then with time he more and more turned away from scholastic studies,
to sit in quiet meditation. He meditated in his monastery cell and in
the caves and forests of the Kingdom of Uddiyana.

At some point in the maturation of his spiritual evolution, he received
the blessed Empowerment and Transmission of the profound Mahayoga
teachings of the Secret Matrix Tradition (Guhyagarbha-tantra)
from the renowned personal guru of the King of Uddiyana, the great white-robed
saint Mahasiddha Kukkuraja. After that he retired into retreat on the
slopes of Mount Suryaprakasa8
in the north, where he performed mantra practice in a small grass hut.

Kukkuraja's instruction had been very direct. "Everything without
exception is the Body-Speech-Mind of the Buddha," he had said. "This Body-Speech-Mind is all-encompassing. Thus know your ultimate identity
to be Vajrasattva, the Body-Speech-Mind of the Buddha."

In his thirty-second year, Acarya Pramodavajra came face to face with
Vajrasattva: he attained complete Enlightenment. Simultaneously
the earth quaked and the sky was filled with celestial sound.

Pleasure and pain lost their sway over him. The emotional strings of
desire and fear fell away, and he found himself complete, in need of nothing.
Utterly transformed by pure vision, his whole being was flooded with the
grace of great bliss, and his mind awoke through the cosmic empowerment
of primordial Awareness.9
Thus, in one instant, he grasped full insight into Absolute Totality,
the omniscient state of Dzogchen Mahamudra.

Now, the holy enlightened sage Sri Pramodavajra held within his intellect
all of the wisdom, all of the insightful understanding, all of the unique
knowledge of what later became known as the Dzogchen Doctrine, and which,
when finally written down, would consist of six million, four hundred thousand
lines of Sanskrit verse. This Doctrine concerns the mysteries of Creation, the development of Man, the nature of Ultimate
Reality (dharmata) and the means of acquiring Enlightenment by
cutting through to a clear view of that Reality. This Doctrine, or optimal
View, has been rightly called the innermost essence of Buddhism.

But at first when the word went forth that the unique sage Sri Pramodavajra
was teaching a new Doctrine, a non-causal doctrine, not everyone was pleased.
A foreign king holding extremist views sent an assassin to kill the enlightened
Master.

Indeed, the era during which we must suppose these events to have occurred
was in fact one of great social upheaval and turmoil. In 690 A.D. the
lady Wu Chao had managed to usurp the throne of China and have herself
made Emperor (Huang-ti), after having been proclaimed, by an
ambitious court monk, as an Incarnation of the future Buddha Maitreya.
By 669 the Western Turks were undergoing considerable political turmoil
and Tri Du-srong, the emperor of Tibet, was actively extending his power
in Central Asia by means of continuous bloody warfare and pillage. The
neighboring Turkish Shahi kingdoms of Kapisa (Shambhala) and
Uddiyana were also both being hard pressed on their southwesterly flank
by the inexorable expansion of the southern Arab Moslems.

Ramashankar Tripathi tells us that although "hardly anything is
known of the Turki Shahis" during this era, nevertheless it is certain
they were carrying on "intermittent wars with the Arab invaders from
the seventh to the middle of the ninth century A.D."10

By 711 A.D. Moslem raiders would descend on Sind under the command of
Muhammad ibn Qasim. The Middle East was in turmoil and continuous political
tensions swept the settled regions of Central Asia. It need not be surprising,
therefore, that in this time of crisis an attempt was made on the life
of the holy father of our sacred tradition.

It was around the same time that a wandering trader in fine cloth, from
the Valley of Cina, came to Uddiyana. By chance the young trader met Acarya
Pramodavajra and, impressed by the Master's saintliness, asked to receive
transmission (agama) and empowerment (abhiseka). Perceiving
that here was a vessel worthy to receive the most excellent teachings,
Sri Pramodavajra initiated the young man into the meditation and mantra
practice of Vajrasattva. The young man's name was Simha, the Lion. Later,
as Sri Simha, he would be known as a main lineage holder of the Master's
teachings.

Promulgating the Doctrine In India

In consequence of the attempt on his life, which proved unsuccessful
only due to his miraculous foresight, the Master departed for Mount Malaya
in the Salt Range to the south of Uddiyana. At some point around this time he gave up the discipline
of a monk, and wandered freely in the white garb of a yogi. It was not
long after this that he began to attract a small following of male and female disciples.
On Mount Malaya he was assisted by three Enlightened-women (dakini)
disciples in transcribing into book form the secret doctrines of Dzogchen.
The work of composition was only concluded after three years of unstinting
labour on the part of Sri Pramodavajra, the Dakini Vajradhatu, the Dakini
Suvarna Shankara, and the Dakini Anantaguna. When the work was finished
they stored it in the archives of a cave-temple known as the Dakini-abhivyaktabhava,
or the " Dakini's Source of Manifestation" , where it was
held in the safe-keeping of the Dakini Cittasana.11

With the certain knowledge that the precious, supreme Secret Doctrine
was secure, Sri Pramodavajra then proceeded on pilgrimage to Vajrasana
(modern Bodh Gaya), the site where centuries earlier Buddha Sakyamuni
had attained his enlightenment. With his mystic consort, the Lady Suryakirana,
he took up residence in the Cool Grove(Sitavana) cremation ground,
which lies about a mile or so northeast of Vajrasana.12;

A large white stupagraced the Cool Grove cremation ground with
its aesthetically beautiful presence. This was the Shankarakuta stupa,
which happens to be the same name as the temple and stupa in Uddiyana
near where the Master had been born. There, in the Cool Grove, at the
base of the white Shankarakuta stupa, Sri Pramodavajra lectured
on the mysteries of the Supreme Truth to many beings, both male and female.

One of the disciples who came to sit at the feet of the divine Master
was the Mahapandita (" Great Sage" ) Manjusrimitra.
Eventually Sri Manjusrimitra became the guru's chief successor and spiritual
regent.

The Master's Last Testament

Sri Pramodavajra spent the rest of his days teaching at the Cool Grove
and at various spots in and around Bodh Gaya. Occasionally he and his
band of male and female disciples would wander northwards to the hotsprings that
are near the Vulture's Peak, not far from Patna.

Eventually the Master's body weakened with age, as is the fate of all
who walk this earth. Then one day, without the slightest pang of remorse,
Sri Pramodavajra passed out of this world.

When Sri Pramodavajra departed from earthly life, he left his Last Testament
in the hands of his chief disciple Manjusrimitra. This highly treasured
Last Testament consists of a tiny fragment of script that has come down
to us in its Tibetan version. Translated into English, it is roughly as
follows:

Three Statements Pointing To Intrinsic
Awareness

Direct introduction to one's own nature.

Direct recognition of that singular state.

Direct continuation through faith in liberation

This Testament,
short though it is, was composed as a means of transmitting from generation
to generation a special fragment of spiritual information between initiates.

Footnotes

1 In Tinley Norbu's version of this
story, Sudharma's name is "Parharani" and she is said to be
the daughter of Asoka (268-231 B.C.), the great Emperor of India.
Needless to say, this is quite anachronistic and historically meaningless.

2 Dudjom Rinpoche says that Sudharma's
vision (or "annunciation" and "miracluous conception") occurred not while bathing, but in a dream while asleep.

3 The visionary vase (kalasha)
was imprinted with the seed phonemes OM AH HUM SVA HA of the five-fold
Buddha pleroma (tathagata-mandala), symbolizing the holy presence
of the essential nature of the Transcendental.

4 Adhicitta, primordial mind,
is referred to in the legend as the "Jina-putra" or divine Son
of the absolute Buddha. The primary aim of the Buddhist legend of Sri
Pramodavajra's immaculate conception is to emphasize that this Master was a perfect living embodiment of Vajrasattva the highest
principle of enlightenment. The conception of Pramodavajra is said to have occurred on the eighth
day of the 1st summer month in the Wood Ox Year. But which Wood Ox year?
Relying on the tradition that places these events 360 years after the
historical parinirvana of Buddha Sakyamuni, the year would be 120 B.C.
Tibetan scholars simply accept this date as authoritative. However, the
Turkish Shahi kingdom of Uddiyana did not exist at that early date. Western
schol­ars, seeking to find a year compatible with the historical context,
have therefore suggested the Wood Ox year of 665 A.D. This would then
represent the true year of Pramodavajra's birth.

5 Yogananda, Autobiography of
a Yogi, Self-realization Fellowship, Los Angeles, 1981. Yogananda
states that the supreme Avatar " is un-subject to the universal economy;
his pure body, visible as a light image, is free from any debt to Nature...
The casual gaze may see nothing extraordinary in an avatar's form; but,
on occasion, it casts no shadow nor makes any footprint on the ground.
These are outward symbolic proofs of an inward freedom from darkness and
material bondage. Such a God-man alone knows the Truth behind the relativities
of life and death."

6 The name Pramodavajra (Tib: Gah-rab
Dorje) was not acquired until later. His original name was Akasavajra
(Tib: Namkhai Dorje), which might also be translated as "heavenly
sceptre" or the 'Diamond' that has come down from Space. He is said
to have received the nickname Vetala-sukha (Tib: Ro-langs-bde-ba),
"Blissful Resurrection" or Ro-langs-thal-mdog, the
Ashen Resurrection. The term "Vetalasukha" can also be seen
to forecast the miracle of Pramodavajra's post-death resurrection.

7 Tib: Gah-rab Dorje,the
name by which he is best known. We possess no surviving Sanskrit record
of his name, and therefore a number of variant reconstructions have been
offered. The most likely is that suggested by my divine Guru, Kyabje Palden
Sherab Rinpoche, namely "Pramodavajra" which means, as in the
Tibetan, the " Diamond of Supreme Joy." Prof. Guenther has suggested
the equally valid "Pramudita-vajra". Prof. Hanson-Barber has
suggested "Anandavajra" but ananda can hardly be taken
as a translation of the Tibetan gah-rab. In some texts "Prahevajra"
is given, which is equally incorrect.

8 Suryaprakasa means the mountain
of the " dawning of the sun" or " Mt. Sunrise." It
is described as being in the North. Which of the many great peaks of the
Hindu Kush or Karakorum this is today cannot be ascertained, but it is
possible that the mountain was the sacred peak (Nanga Parbat?) in Hunza
on which Jesus Christ (Isa-Masiha), surrounded by the disc of
the sun, is said to have appeared to a king of the Sakas, according to
the Bhavisya purana. The other sacred mountain in Uddiyana was
Mt. Ilam (referred to as Mt. Ilo by the Tibetans), which lies south-east
of the old capital. It is hard to say what "North" means in
this context. It could be taken as North within the Dhanakosa district,
or north in the sense of up the Swat River. It is also possible that the
mountain was the renowned Tirich Mir, North of the Lotkho Valley in the
Chitral.

9 The "Empowerment of Awareness"
(Tib: Rigpai rTsal­dbang) is a technical term in the Dzogchen
tradition, mean­ing the direct introduction of the devotee to the
intrinsic nature of his own mind-essence. When the Dzogchen Master bestows
this empowerment, he or she directly introduces the student to his or her own
nature. In the story of the advent of Dzogchen as a teaching on this planet,
it is said that Sri Pramodavajra received this empowerment(abhiseka)
from Vajrasattva, the Supreme Being. He thus became capable
of passing it on to his disciple, and so on. This empowerment of the creative
energy (rTsal) of innate Awareness is what truly consists of
the actual transmission, from generation to generation in an intimate
Master-disciple relationship, of the precious Yogacara lineage. This is
known as the heart to heart transmission, because it is communicated mystically
from the heart of the Master to the heart of the disciple.

10 Ramashankar Tripathi, History
of Ancient India, New Delhi 1985. The last Buddhist ruler in Gilgit
was Sri Badat in the 7th century. His slayer and successor was a Persian
adventurer named Azur Jamshed, who forcibly married Sri Badat's daughter.
It is therefore likely that the " foreign king with extremist views"
who sent an assassin against Sri Pramodavajra was this same Moslem usurper.
West of Gilgit there is a large standing Buddha image carved on a cliff
face in Kargah Nala that dates from Sri Pramodavajra's era. On up Shuko
Gah there are the ruins of a monastery and stupa, and a cave where Buddhist
birch bark texts (now known as the Gilgit Manuscripts) were discovered
in the 1930s. To the south of Gilgit stands Nanga Parbat, the eighth highest
mountain in the world, its north face stepping down 8,000 metres to the
Indus River. Native inhabitants to this day still believe that sacred
Nanga Parbat (or Dia-mir in the local dialect) is topped by a
crystal palace occupied by fairy spirits, or capricious Dakars and
Dakinis, and guarded by cloud serpents.

11The term Dakini (Tib: Kha-dro-ma)
used in the tantrasapplies to a female Buddha or Vidyadhara,
a woman who has attained enlightenment. On Mount Malaya the Master was
assisted by three such women in writing down the volumi­nous text
of the Secret Doctrine, whose names may be interpreted as follows: the
Dakini of the Diamond-expanse (Vajradhatu-dakini); the Dakini
of Golden-blessings (Suvarna Shankara-dakini); and the Dakini
of Endless Qualities (Anantaguna-dakini). Mount Malaya (often
conflated with the mountain of Ugra, known in Tibetan as drag-shul-can)
has been incorrectly designated by Dudjom Rinpoche as Adam's Peak
in Sri Lanka (Ceylon). The ancient name Malaya used to apply to the whole
range of mountains west of Malabar (i.e., the Western Ghats) in southern
India, which are famous for their sandalwood trees, and ancientMalayacala
(Mt. Malaya) may have been one of the main peaks in that range. ThatMt. Malaya would appear to be the same as Mons Bettigo mentioned
as a home of the Magi by Ptolemy of Alexandria in the second century A.D.,
where he states: " In like manner the parts under Mount Bettigo are
occupied by the Brakhmanai Magoi as far as the Batai, with the city of
Brahme..." A popular reference to Mt. Malaya is to be found in the
Sadharma-lankavatara-sutra, where Lanka is in fact a citadel
(puri) located on the hieghts of Mt. Malaya, ruled over by the
mythical King Ravana of the Ramayana epic. But in the tantric
period there was, however, a Lankapuri in the West of India, south of
Uddiyana, which was identified by Hiuen Tsiang as Simhapura, with
its capital at Kataksha (modern Ketas) in the Salt Range south
of Rawalpindi. It hardly bears mention that Simhapura and Lankapuri are
synonymous names. In a notation to folio 96A of Taranatha's History of
Buddhism in India,V.P. Vasil'ev confirms the old tradition
of the 84 Mahasiddhas that the Kingdom of Uddiyana was divided
between two countries, to the North and South. To the North, it bordered
on the land of Shambhala (i.e., the Kingdom of Kapisa), while to the South
was Lankapuri. A tenth century king of Uddiyana, named Indrabhuti, had
a sister called Laksminkara, who married King Jalendra of Lankapuri. It
was to this Lankapuri, with its famous Malaya mount, that Pramodavajra
traveled when he left Uddiyana.

12 Today the site of the
famous Cool Grove can still be found. More or less unknown by the multitude
of tourist visitors who come each year to Bodh Gaya, it is nevertheless
an important meeting place for wandering Buddhist and Hindu yogis. Sitavana
is still a pleasant grove of tall trees. There are some stones amongst
the grass, which I take to be the last remains of the large Shankarakuta
stupa that used to stand there. It was truly from this sacred site that
Pramodavajra’s teachings were originally promulgated, and it was again from
this same site 1260 years later that the Indian sage Kunu Rinpoche re-promulgated
them to the leading Masters of our age.